Men are cited for scientific misconduct in the life sciences more often than women. How much more often? Find out...

Two-thirds of researchers responsible for recent cases of scientific
misconduct in the life sciences are male, according to a new study (1).
Across all career stages, and from 1994 to 2012, men are overrepresented in
misconduct cases when compared to the percentage of men in the field. The
new analysis is the first to look at differences in misconduct rates between
the genders, and adds to a growing collection of data that aims to explain
who commits scientific fraud and why.

Over a twelve year time period, more cases of misconduct were attributed to males than females. Source: mBio

“I think what we’re seeing is that everybody feels pressures when they’re
working as a scientist, but some people give into it more than others,” said
Ferric Fang, a researcher at the University of Washington School of Medicine
and first author of the study published in the American Society for
Microbiology journal mBio. “It looks like males give in to these
pressures more frequently than females.”

Previously, Fang and his collaborators studied what causes scientific papers
to be retracted. In the process, they examined the details of many
misconduct cases. Anecdotally, it seemed that many of the cases revolved
around male scientists.

But the researchers wanted to know if men were truly overrepresented in
misconduct, or if the numbers simply reflected a higher percentage of men in
academia. “It’s always a good thing to actually have hard numbers to know
what you’re dealing with instead of just anecdotal impressions,” said Fang.

The team turned to data from the US Office of Research Integrity, which
provided details on 228 misconduct cases over the previous 12 years. They
parsed the data by career stage—students, post-doctoral fellows, research
personnel, and faculty members—since each has a different gender balance.
Overall, 65% of the misconduct was attributed to men. Among faculty members,
88% of the cases were committed by men, who make up less than 70% of the
total population of scientists.

In addition to showing that men were overrepresented, the new paper
highlighted the fact that more misconduct (32%) was attributed to faculty
members than students (16%), postdocs (25%), or other research personnel
(28%). Assumptions are often made that research fraud is more common among
students because of their inexperience or pressure to obtain a job. Because
of this idea, many efforts to combat misconduct are aimed at student and
postdoc populations. But the new results suggest that such efforts could be
misguided.

“We’re just providing the simplest of facts based on the best data we could
obtain, and there’s still much to be done to try to understand these
numbers,” said Fang.

Further sociological research is needed to reveal what factors may be at play
in the gender imbalance. And much data is still lacking because scientists
accused of misconduct infrequently speak publicly about their cases, Fang
said.

“I think there’s still a paucity of detailed information on these cases,” said
Fang. “You can gather superficial pieces of information like we have, but it
doesn’t tell you what really motivated someone to do something.”